Archive for the Cowboy attire Category

Sorry for the gap in posting; I was doing really important stuff. While I was gone, my old nemesis Joe the Plumber gave a nonsensical speech to a group of teabaggers, the nation engaged in a vigorous (sort of) debate about sex-positive feminism, and I got bronchitis or something.

Say, if you’d like to see more updates in this spaces, why not e-mail me and tell me about your recent exploits? I am currently seeking CTGML stories that feature (1) makeup sex between couples, and (2) guys as the protagonist, especially gay guys (but straight guys too). But raunchy stories from straight women, like the subject of today’s story, are always appreciated.

Blonde vixen “Debby” is a political blogger who lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Every so often she visits her grandfather “John” and his wife, who live in Tahoe — she’s an expert skier. One weekend this winter, she went up there for a short ski vacation. On one of her first nights in town, she and John went out to a restaurant that featured lots of unusual game, like buffalo, antelope, and elk. She was still wearing ski clothes from her day outside, but likes to go for a look more glamorous than the natural/sporty vibe most ladies project there (or so she claims — I don’t know anything about the topic; I am frightened of skiing, and don’t have any relations that do any leisure activities more glamorous than copy-editing), so she was wearing black Under Armour leggings and a tight black ski jacket by Salomon, with heavy black eyeliner.

Salomon jacket

Kohl eyeliner

As she and her grandpa were ordering a bottle of wine, she noticed their “hot young server.” He had “classic male” good looks, and he looked admiringly back at her. Debby ordered the antelope. She asked for medium rare; grandpa made the interaction weird by saying “She’s a meat eater, she likes blood on her plate!” But when the antelope showed up, it was dry and overdone, and she had to send it back.

The replacement piece of antelope, when Seth the waiter brought it, was “fabulous.” This time he and them ended up getting into a conversation. He revealed that he’s from the same state the she is, and that he was in the process of applying to law school, and that he was a skier rather than a snowboarder. Debby’s grandfather approved of these facts. (He is prejudiced against snowboarders, on the ground that they tear up the snow too much, or something.) He seemed impressed by the guy and, noticing the sparks flying between him and Debby, “conveys that he thinks I should get on it.”

He helped out with this by supplying a pretext, saying something along the lines of “my granddaughter has this blog, she’s doing a story on snowboard clothing.” She wasn’t doing any such thing. I didn’t understand why he brought snowboarding into it when all three of them were skiers, and according to Debby, “it didn’t really make any sense.” She can’t remember how on earth he introduced this topic in the first place. Anyhow, he suggested they meet up so she could interview Seth. “Are you available tomorrow?”, he asked. Meanwhile, she and Seth were looking each other in they eyes, and he looked, in her words, like he “can’t believe this is being handed to him.” She was pretty pleased about it, too. (It sounds like kind of unusual behavior on John’s part, but again, what do I know? Both my grandfathers drank themselves to death before I was born.)

Seth said “No, I’m not available.” and John asked “What about tonight?”, and handed him her name and number on a piece of paper. When they walked out of the restaurant shortly afterwards, news of the little romance was already being bruited about among the staff. The bartender called out “hey, don’t forget to call Ben!” Debby was in a relaxed mood, having “been drinking all day with cougars” that she’d met on the slopes, and she was “laughing her ass off” about the situation.

She called Seth a couple of hours later, saying she would be at this bar the Dusty Boot later that evening, and did he want to meet for a drink. He did. He texted her a while later, saying “I’m at the Dusty Boot.” She had changed into dark gray BDG jeans from Urban Outfitters, white cowboy boots, a loose black tank top, and a cardigan also from Urban Outfitters.

BDG jeans

Urban Outfitters cardigan

White cowboy boot

A bunch of her new Tahoe friends were at the bar, and had a good time. She and Seth drank tequila with lime and talked about “kayaks” and “ice climbing.” He told her about how he got fed on the job by eating people’s sendbacks, and explained his policy as “I would eat anybody’s food I would make out with.” “So you ate that burned-up piece of antelope?” He said no, he didn’t eat the burned antelope. (What a ridiculous sentence to have to type.)

“So you wouldn’t eat my antelope?”

“No, I would.”

Having gotten that out of the way, they kept talking for a while; he said “do you wanna go make out in the bathroom?”, and she said “no, I wanna go play in the snow.” They went to her car and got a flask of tequila. They ran around until they found a “snow-enclosed gondola,” got inside and started “making out furiously.” “Before I knew it, my pants were down, and I was like ‘What am I doing, no.'” That sounds uncomfortable, but also, she revealed to me at this point that when she stays with the old folks, she has a 12 p.m. curfew. What the heck? So they both started walking back to her condo entrance.

Instead of separating, though, they went into the locker rooms that the building has for people to store their ski equipment, where they again started “makin’ out like crazy.” Debby didn’t feel she could afford to get into trouble, so she came up with a plan. She said “I have to leave and come back.” Seth said “I’ll wait for you.” She went upstairs, found her grandpa, and said “okay, I came back, I’m gonna go back out,” all petulant-like. John was amenable to this, only saying “don’t stay out too long.”

She went back down to the locker room and found Seth, and they resumed “makin’ out all hard.” Finally, the clothes came off, and “we did it up against a locker. It was really hot.” One might think this would be difficult, especially since she’s short, but she claimed they did not suffer from any logistical difficulties. Then they said goodbye, she went upstairs to bed, and she hasn’t seen him again.

EDITED TO ADD that I share your confusion about this story, readers. Debby is in her 20s and doesn’t need a curfew. On the other hand, when I visit my parents, I can’t even go to CVS without briefing them on where I’m going, how long I’ll be gone, and how I won’t wreck the car on the way home. That is what family members are like. On the other hand, if her grandfather is of a protective bent, why pimp out her and her juicy antelope to a virile young man? Debby’s grandfather sounds like a weirdo.

If you live in the eastern half of the United States, it’s possible that you, like me, are too sick to think about sex. Perhaps you clicked this bookmark out of sheer habit, from the deep recesses of a germy sickbed, and didn’t really want to be titillated. For you, I’ll begin with a couple of generalized bitches (“observations”) about life.

(1) Legislators all over America are mulling plans to regulate and tax marijuana. Just great. They finally get around to legalizing recreational drugs, and they start with the one that makes me all paranoid and antisocial. Why can’t the government ever regulate and tax a drug that I like? They could do mushrooms/peyote, which are just as healthy but give you fun hallucinations, or opium, which has that cool smell. The last time I got high on marijuana, all that happened was I became so fascinated by the movie Scrooged!, I barely noticed when all my friends went home to bed. I’m going to start a new political organization, called The Legalize Cocaine, Ecstasy and Adderall Abuse Party.

(2) Seriously, what is the effin’ deal with this illness? For those who have not experienced it up close, it’s a cold/flu with a dramatic cough. If you can imagine the domestic chaos that would ensue if the head of a family of ducks came home to find his wife making love with another duck, the resulting hellish cacophony is what it sounds like when I have to cough, every 12 seconds. It’s March! I was supposed to be rolling around nude in a verdant field! This was not the plan at all!

But enough of that; our story takes place way, way, way back, near the middle of our Winter of Discontent, on New Year’s Eve. “Chloe,” a recent college graduate, was going out to a big party with “Brad”; they’re friends, and she had agreed to act as a his wingwoman. Brad had been casually dating a young lady, and hoped this would be the night to seduce her. She would be attending the same party, and the idea was that “when she showed up, he was going to gracefully ditch me.”

Chloe was wearing a Betsey Johson dress, empire waisted, with turquoise stripes, black stockings with seams up the back (for “old-fashioned whorishness”), and black stilettos by Mossimo for Target.

(Picture of the dress coming soon!)

Back-seam stockings

Mossimo pumps

Brad came over before the party, and “we get kinda coked up.” They had bought some coke a couple of weeks before, in anticipation. They went the party, where everything went as expected. Brad’s lady friend showed up, and “they were pairing up as the night went on.”

A little while before midnight, he was like “Can I leave with her?” and Chloe was like “Dude, that was the plan.” He was wearing cowboy boots, jeans and a sable corduroy jacket. Chloe says he has “rugged good looks,” and would have gotten laid anyway.

Corduroy jacket

Cowboy boots

She decided it was time to leave the party and head to a certain bar (“The Liquor Box”) where some of her friends were. She hurried over there, arrived “literally three minutes” before the countdown to midnight, and proceeded to get “shitty drunk on free champagne.”

She was with her friends, feeling comfortable and happy. But “there’s this guy.” He was across the bar from her. “I’m making eyes at him, he’s making eyes at me.” A pale blondie, she loves “swarthy men,” and he was tall, dark and handsome (it turned out that he’s Iranian). She said to herself, “I want that dude.” Knowing what to say was not a problem because, according to her, “I’m not shy.” She introduced herself, and had a conversation in which she asked the following four questions:

— What’s your name? (“Alan”)
— What do you do? (He’s a business school student)
— Where do you live? (In town, near her)
— Do you want to go home with me? (Yes)

All the stars were aligned: “I wanted to have sex, he was there, he was hot.” Alan drove her to her house, unnerving her in the process by having the “cleanest car ever.” In the living room, they “pretended to have a conversation,” in interest of feigning decorum. But it didn’t last too long. After that, there was “lots of fuckin’,” with her on top because she “wanted to look at his perfect caramel skin.” She adds that “the sex was good, nothin’ to call your mama about.” Those were here exact words, but I think your mama does not want to hear about how you were ravished by a huge Arab, even (especially?) if it was mind-blowing. They fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning, she and Alan woke up around 10 and he drove her back to her car. She was “hung over as balls,” with a mouth tasting of “ashtray and cock,” and went back to bed immediately. When she woke up again around 5, she discovered he had left a Burberry Scarf and Kenneth Cole watch behind in his “mad dash to get out of my vagina.”

The tan one is ugly.

She considered selling these items on Craigslist, but her conscience got the better of her, and she managed to track him down on Facebook (they hadn’t traded contact information, or even last names). He came and got his accessories a few days later. Since then, they’ve seen each other out multiple times; each time, they have exchanged looks across the bar, as if to say “we shared a moment of deep personal intimacy, and now I want nothing to do with you.”

It’s also worth nothing that until shortly before this story begins, Chloe was in a relationship with a “fat science fiction fan,” and she says ever since then, the guys she’s slept with are getting hotter and hotter. She attributes this to a combination of confidence, alcohol, and the fact that “I am always willing.”

“Anita” is in her early 20s and works as a vintage clothing seller. (She requested this pseudonym; it’s kind of weird for me because my mom is named Anita, but I was like “okay.”) I talked to her the other night, and she told me about a fateful series of events that took place about six months ago — on what I would call a “memorable night,” except that, as with many of the people I talk to, she only remembers about half of it.

Anita was single at the time, although casually dating several guys. (She’s very petite and small in stature! Does this ever happen to taller women?) Her ex-boyfriend had a friend that she was trying to be buddies with; she saw him around a lot or whatever, and she had suggested that they should hang out some time. She wasn’t trying to have it off with him, though; she just thought he was a fun guy.

The first time she suggested getting together, he didn’t have time. Then a few nights later, he was having people over to his apartment, and he called her to say “come over, let’s hang out.” She showed up wearing cowboy boots, skinny Levi’s jeans, and an 80s concert t-shirt.

Cowboy boots

She wouldn’t tell me what the 80’s concert was, apparently on the grounds that it would be too identifying (?). However, RANT OF THE DAY: Can people please shut the hell up about “80’s music”? When anyone uses this phrase, as far as I can tell, they seem to be talking about a particular style of glossy synthesizer pop music that was popular in that decade. Like, Wham! and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Spandau Ballet and whatever the fuck. WARNING, CHALLENGING OPINION ALERT, that style of music totally sucks. It’s crappy and overproduced, plus the drums sound too “wet.” Time spent talking about “80’s music” is wasted time that could have been employed discussing an actual good band! Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds put out like ten records in the 80’s,so if you’re going to fetishize a decade, why don’t you talk about them? Talk about Tom Waits or something. Also, I hate the saxophone solo in “Careless Whispers.” Seriously, “80’s music” needs to suck my balls. Here are some concert t-shirts from the nineteen-eighties that I would condone wearing.

Flipper still rules

Butthole Surfers

Anita’s new friend “Gibby” had a bunch of his dudes over, watching episodes of The Office (American version). She brought over a “huge bottle of Gentleman Jack” and proceeded to drink it straight up. Gibby was drinking the whiskey too, I think. Time passed. At one point, Gibby went into the kitchen to get another drink, and she went with him. She kissed him and they started making out. She hadn’t ever been interested in him before, and attributes what happened to beer goggles (“Gentleman Jack spectacles”?).

They went back out into the living room and acted normal around Gibby’s friends, as one does. Then eventually, he decided to go to bed, and told her, “come in there when you’re ready.” So that’s what she did — she went into his bedroom, and they had sex. She says “it was a success.”

It is unclear what all the other dudes were doing while this was going on; maybe they had gone home. This part of the story is kind of weird. And what makes it even odder is, Anita revealed that it was still only 10 p.m. when they got done having sex! I was confused by this at first, because I couldn’t understand why Gibby went to bed so early. Now I think I know the reason, though. I think that “going to bed” was just a ploy he used to get laid. I know, right? Can you imagine? What kind of man would do such a thing? Shocking, but in any case, Anita had no urge to sleep over there. “I was just done, and then I left.”

She went home and changed clothes, into a floral sundress, with the same boots and no underwear.

Floral sundress

Forever 21 dress

She phoned up some good friends and they told her they were at a popular local billiard hall, “Tight Pocket Billiards.” She drove over, joined them, and started drinking again. It was there that she met “Charlie,” a friend of her friends who was partying with them. When she first spotted him, she mistook him for someone she had met before, so she was like “hey, you’re Kurt.” He was like “no,” but they struck up a conversation.

Shortly thereafter, she “asked him to take me home.” It struck me that this story was missing the part where the two folks go from shaking hands to going home to fuck. “What did you talk about?”, I asked. She said they didn’t talk much, and that it was basically a matter of “chemistry” between them. Furthermore, “when you have sex, you want more.”

And so it came to pass that they went to his apartment and had the “best sex ever.” Chemistry doesn’t lie! A surprising fact about this interview is that Charlie was there while I was conducting it (we were at a fashion party). He had been talking to someone else, but wandered over at this point. Anita kept emphasizing that it was “seriously, the best sex ever.” Charlie seemed more pleased than otherwise to be associated with an activity like this. He says that when they met, he was wearing a black Nirvana t-shirt, probably with jeans and Pumas.

Vintage shirt

Charlie didn’t call her back for two weeks after that, but she says they are now “best friends” who also have great sex. Looking at my archives, this has happened before, that someone had better luck when they went out for the second time in one night. I mentioned it to Georgiana, and she thinks it is because of, quote, “pheromones.” You leave the house all smeared with your own sex pheromones, and you attract someone whose body chemicals and hormones are all matched up with yours. Right?

Holy Grails: We know so little about them. As regular readers will recall, we know that an HG is an article of clothing that consistently garners special, sexy attention for its wearer when she or he appears in public. We know that many people possess such items (although, Lord knows, not all of us), and we know that these auspicious garments have helped to get their wearers laid on multiple occasions. But where do Holy Grails come from? How do they work, and why do they work? Are the properties of the HG intrinsic to the object itself, or do they result from an increased sense of confidence on the part of the subject? A cynical person would probably claim that they’re like those “lucky socks” or whatever that athletes wear, and only work because they make you feel special; but literally no one really knows the answers to these question.

Look, people, here’s the truth: My methodology isn’t really very scientific. This clothes thing is a new field of endeavor, like biology was in the nineteenth century, and if I were a Victorian naturalist, I would get the information I needed by going into the field and recording thousands of specimens. I haven’t been doing that, because I don’t have the resources. I’m not a Charles Darwin or an Alfred Wallace, and I can’t be travelling to Peru or whatever, notebook in hand, hunting down obscure varietals of ass-flattering trousers. Instead I rely on people sending me e-mails that might provide key evidence.

It is lucky, then, that just when I was wondering about Holy Grails, I got this e-mail from “Agatha,” who wrote me on Christmas Eve. She prefaces her remarks by explaining that “I’m a little hung over… I’m about to endure my very large family for entirely too long and it’s still too early to start drinking again.”

Agatha is in her 20’s and lives in a small town (“Possum Flats”) in Delaware. She says that “I have these cowboy boots that were given to me by my now ex-fiancé.” He gave them as a birthday present because she “had been thinking about buying a pair, but my work situation was ridiculous and I couldn’t find the time to shoe shop.” She has since left the job, which “was sucking my soul dry,” and the man, who “turned out to be a giant ass.” But the boots remain. “It’s starting to occur to me that they are my holy grail. Any time I wear them out, it’s pretty much guaranteed that some man will look down, comment on them and then get this wistful far-off look for a moment. I couldn’t figure out the look until last week.”

Vintage Frye boots

On the night she’s referring to, Agatha went to a bar in Possum Flats to exchange Christmas gifts with a friend. She went out “wearing the first clean clothes I came by, a beige and brown striped thermal shirt from the Gap (big beige stripes, little brown stripes and it buttons a little), a pair of dark brown cords I’ve had for so long I don’t know where I bought them (these pants are great because my ass looks great in them, but they’re still really comfortable!), and of course, the boots.”

Gap brown cords

“It was a really weird night.” The two friends had met up with “really no interest in talking to anyone else, and it’s not my style to pick people up at bars. We ended up staying way longer than I thought we would. We somehow ended up talking to these three guys at the other side of the bar. The bartender called last call around 12:30, at which point, one of the guys asked what our plans were for the rest of the evening. {Editor’s note: I hate it when bars close this early! We’d never put up with that in my town!}”

They “conferred with each other and decided we could still drink and not be scumbags the next day at work. Leaving with the new guy friends, I hung back a little with the one I’d been flirting with (kinda looks like the guy from the Verizon commercials, but in a cute way) and in the hallway of the bar, we start making out. Big lower lip. Yummy. Out on the sidewalk, all of us freezing, we’re trying to decide where to go. Their place was around the corner, so we walk the three blocks or so laughing drunkenly.”

Verizon man

The scene at “this random house” was as follows: “We’re all sitting around drinking beer and eating cookies. The computer was on playing music from some sort of internet radio thing. I forget what the song was… it was Neil Young. Horizon Moon?? Blue Horizon?? something like that, when all three guys jump up off the couch and take their pants off. They just started dancing around in their boxers. Said something about whenever that song came on, you dance in your undies. We didn’t buy it. There was a cat walking around the apartment that at one point started sucking on my arm. That was weird… there was dancing involved too. Fully dressed though.”

After this night of cat-sucking and erotic dance, who wouldn’t be in the mood for love? Agatha was, it seemed, because “I kinda made the first move. Again… it was weird. I felt like someone else! Me and this guy were sitting on the couch and everyone else was outside smoking. I stood up, grabbed his hand and walked him down the hallway to his room. Pretty clear intentions.”

She adds that she and “‘can you hear me now?’ guy” have been texting, and might see each other again. But the part of the story that’s most important for science is that while they were hooking up, “he asked if I would leave the boots on. (My ah-ha moment with the boots! That’s the look!! Why it took me this long to figure out, is completely beyond me.)” So that’s that. Holy Grails work because they make people picture you fucking them while still wearing them! I like this theory; it could be true, and it has a certain elegant simplicity.

EPILOGUE: “Me and the friend from the bar having been trying to figure out this boot stuff since. She was talking to one of her bosses about the whole thing the next day (Wow, you look really tired… good night?? haha!!… apparently we were out late enough to be scumbags at work the next day). I have never met her boss. I don’t know his name, never seen him, couldn’t point him out if I had to… My friend, saying something about the boots, laughed when her boss got a far-off wistful look and asked what color they were!”

“Samantha” submits this story, the second-prize winner in our Halloween contest series. (I only got like two entries, and the first-prize winner is ridiculously debauched.) It took place in 1999, while she was in graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill: “I was 23, and dating multiple guys (which I had never done); therefore, feeling very adventurous. I decided to recycle an old 1920’s flapper costume (a crushed velvet black dress with several layers of fringe) because I like that it was sort of sexy without screaming, ‘yes I want to get laid!'”

Black flapper dress

I didn’t like the shoes in this flapper-dress picture, so I went on the internet to find pictures of some hot flapper shoes. Something terrible occurred. I found out that actual 1920’s pumps were not hot. They were extremely dowdy. All thick, clunky heels, and uppers coming too high up on the foot so there isn’t any toe cleavage. Look here, or at the picture below. MATRONLY. People always talk about how great the fashions of the 20s were, but in the time that’s passed since then, our understanding of what constitutes a hot shoe has advanced by orders of magnitude. Fashion nostalgia-ists, you should be proud to live in the 21st century. WE ARE LIVING IN A GOLDEN AGE OF HOT SHOES.

She continues, “anyway, the guys I had been seeing at the time all flaked out on me, and so I found myself fairly drunk at a dance club (called “The Treehouse” no less).” She was dancing with friends and ran into “Chris,” whom she had met a few times. She knew him because he hung out with one of the guys she was dating, “Brandon.” Chris is “your standard Midwestern corn-fed type of guy — about 6 feet tall, medium build, dirty blond hair, blue eyes. Personality? Boring as hell. But this particular evening, he was dressed up as a cowboy AND he had just hurt his ankle so he had a crutch with him. Which, in my drunken state, made him ever-so-endearing in that “Aw, shucks” kind of way. So, we danced closely the whole night. He managed to stay sober enough to drive me home. I managed to stay drunk enough to ask him up to my room. We made out but given my drunken state, I passed out before anything really happened.”

White Stetson hat

Nocona cowboy boots

“I awoke the next morning with a terrible hangover and immediate remorse. I looked over at Chris and attempted to be civil. He interpreted my civility as, “hey baby, wanna have morning sex?” I gave him some courtesy kisses, but when he climbed on top of me, I just shook my head at him. ‘No way, guy. Not going to happen.'” Aw, how sad. “He was nice enough to drive me to work, though I did feel very awkward about the fact that he was good friends with one of the guys I was dating.”

And who were these other guys? “Mike” was a dude she met through her housemate and hooked up with about a month into the school year. “Then he started to freak out because he was a reformed pastor’s kid. Meaning, he went crazy during college and did lots of drugs and had lots of sex. So he thought he would turn a new leaf during grad school, and went back to being an evangelical Christian. Which meant NO SEX.” That’s one way to make graduate school even more stressful, I suppose. After she got sick of this she moved on to Chris’s friend “Brandon.” He was an older guy in her program she would hook up with from time to time. He totally lied about his whereabouts and went out with his other girlfriend on Halloween night. “Mike knew about Brandon and hated him.”

I’ll start posting Halloween contest entries soon. In the meantime, a story with a moral. This weekend I was out a bar, and got talking to a young man who said he would be interviewed for my website. “Samuel” told me that he usually wears jeans from the Gap and white cowboy-style shirts. His source for these shirts is that “a bunch of girls give ’em to me.” They’re informal gifts; for example, maybe a female friend will find a nice shirt for cheap at a thrift store, and buy it for him. I asked Samuel if he believes items someone else picks out for you are more successful — for such is my intuition — and he agreed with me. “If a cute girl buys you a shirt, you’re gonna get laid, sooner or later.” (That’s not the moral of the story, though.)

Vintage cowboy shirt

Another cowboy shirt

Gap jeans

Only a week earlier, this principle had proven itself true. He was “sittin’ at the bar wearing what I was wearin’, and I went home with someone.” The woman was wearing what he describes as “nice butt-lookin’ jeans.”

This sounded promising, but my source became reticent when I tried to find out the full story. For example, I asked him where he knew this woman from, and he said “from sex before” that they had had. When was the first time they hooked up, and what was hear wearing then? He wasn’t saying. Instead he started making comments like “I probably shouldn’t be talking about this.” I explained to him that he shouldn’t be embarrassed to talk to me about private matters, because I’m like a doctor, or an anthropologist. Samuel wasn’t having it. He adopted a suspicious, “Joe the Plumber”-like attitude.

At one point, he mentioned that the woman in the butt-lookin’ jeans is a friend’s ex-girlfriend. This led me to think that affair had begun with some clandestine sneakin’ around, and that’s why he woudn’t discuss it, but at the time I didn’t care what the reason was; I was just mad at him for being a bad interviewee. I was like “you’re even worse than that Gumby guy!” This seemed to infuriate him more than anything, because he was all like “NO!!“. (I don’t think he knew who the Gumby guy was; he claimed not to own a computer.) Anyway, the moral is: Don’t be a prima donna about getting interviewed for this blog. You’re only blocking the advance of science if you do that.